LANGSTON HUGHES TRIBUTE ISSUE Yvette Neisser Moreno   HOW THE WATER SETTLES for Jorge When I was a child there was a net I feared falling into— people caught in a tumult of ropes, climbing a few steps then tumbling back down, unable to grip something so full of holes. I clung to the rim as if I could remain solid by holding onto that wood. These nights, I dream of rivers, the two of us in a small canoe: a congestion of boats, hull knocking against hull, we rock in the wake. Awakening in your embrace, sometimes I run my fingers along the length of your arm, trying to trace my future in the patterns of veins that fade into the crook of your elbow. After the world shakes on its axis, there you are, steadying me, absorbing all that friction. The water settles. The earth realigns.   Yvette Neisser Moreno's poems and translations have appeared in The International Poetry Review, The Potomac Review, The Seventh Quarry, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her translation (from Spanish) of Argentinean Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2009. Currently, she is working on her own first book of poetry and translating a book by Venezuelan poet María Teresa Ogliastri. Moreno works as a freelance writer and Spanish interpreter, and teaches writing at the University of Maryland University College and at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. She resides in Silver Spring, with her husband and two children.   Published in Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2011.   To read more by this author: Yvette Neisser: DC Places Issue Yvette Neisser Moreno: Audio Issue Yvette Neisser Moreno